I did 'em, Amos. Would I do else? And if you think so, you still gotta prove it. And my wife's a LAWYER who taught me all sorts of law stuff about untellectual properties and things. So I just say to you, "Ipso ex post facto, de minimis non regit lex", which was clearly established in U.S. v. Burr, Ariz. Terr. v. Wyatt Earp, et al., Crown v. Louis Riel, and of course, Falwell v. Flynt. And this can all be ultimately decided, as so many cases in the Old West have been, by the precedents set in such cases John Henry Holliday, et al. v. Clanton Family, et al., City of Northfield, Minn. v. Frank and Jesse James, et al., City of Coffeyville, Kans. v. Gratt Dalton, et al., and many others.

Yeah, look what it did to Henry Fonda! He got so drunk on it one night that he ran off and shacked up with the chambermaid for the night. Of course, he was aghast when he woke up the next morning and hastily beat a retreat, covered with embarassment. He never acknowledged the girl, even though it later turned out she was pregnant as a result of the liaison.

She gave birth to a boy, but gave up on trying to get Henry to take responsibility, settling for some payoff or other to forget about it, and she moved up to a small coastal town in Oregon and raised the lad --whonm she had named Hargrove, after her own father--as a single mom for years. Finally when he was about nine, he asked his mother where he had come from, and she had to face the big question of how much to tell him.

On the other hand, the trend so clearly set by Hemingway toward super-dense, unembellished prose can obviously be carried so far as to completely undermine intelligibility. Acknowledgements to Ye Mon of Bookes for so eruditely making the case.

A man can dream, a man can think, and sometimes deeply feel. A man can scheme and curse and drink, and lose his even keel. Oh, a man can chase after many a goal, He can strive for wealth like a real asshole, Or spend life watching the waters roll, Where the oceans meet the fields. But the test of a man who is truly a man Is to do everything that a real man can To weaken the grip of reality's brand, And throw off the cold realistic hand, And make lesser thinkers' minds rock and reel, Turning red to mauve and white to teal, Leaving systems of thought all in dishabile, As he makes things more surreal, my lads, Makes things more surreal.

As for randomization, you seem to forget that I work in a public library.

This afternoon, for instance, the Board of Trustees agreed to a Memorandum of Understanding with the local United Way to transfer a Winnebago from a UW agency to the Library for use as a bookmobile, PROVIDED that the City Council agrees. This would transfer the title from the UW Agency to the Friends of the Library after the Friends give the UW Agency $5,000, who would immediately transfer the title to the Library as an agency of the City, EXCEPT that the UW Agency would act in a very advisory capacity for the usable life of the unit UNLESS the arrangement was terminated by mutual agreement before then.

I've only been working on this since December, right after we got the dinosaur.

"your pretentious eloquence is void and nul, free of merit, and absent all bearing on the question"

Oh! Marvelous! By God, I can find many useful occasions in the future for using those very words, I just know it. Only I'll change "void and nul" to "null and void". I can hardly wait. But whom shall I inflict them upon? Bill D? Lonesome E.J.? Spaw? Stilly River Sage? Guest from Sanity? Bearded Bruce? Amos himself???

I'll have to think carefully about it. Such choice words should be hoarded like the finest wine and saved for the perfect moment.

Oh, Pshaw, your pretentious eloquence is void and nul, free of merit, and absent all bearing on the question. That the ignorant among our species will reject knowledge or learning is an easy assertion, but nothing to do with my small sins, sirrah. You are a braggart and a granfalloon.

I would refute your words, Goode Sire, save that I must prepare for a meeting of the bibliotecal Trustees this post meridian. Hence I will forebear the retorts and arguments which crowd my keyboard aimply remind you commune hoc ignorantiae vitium est: quae nescias, nequicquam esse profiteri.

Oh, sir, you do me great disservice; it was not for my own sake that I transferred my silly ditty to another thread, but for the greater glory of Mom. Surely even you can see that plainly. For to see it as you have insinuated, you would have to believe that some great acclaim would accrue to me as a person by the readers of said anthology, which is in truth merely a thread upon the 'Cat and no greate Booke at all. And such a precept therefore falls to dust before the merest inspection, and without such a premise on which to predicate your implication, it has no merit, and must yield to the more reasonable Case.

All mortal things are subject to decay And when A--- writes, e'en monarchs must obey. So 'twas a Bloomsday e'er to fine With smiling sun and skies sublime That A--- cut a chantey down to size And then proceeded himself to anthologize.